A real deck of cards where every card is a fable animal — and every card opens its song. It plays all the games you already know, and twelve that belong to it.
The first six are games you already know with one word swapped, so nobody has to learn anything before the first hand. Five of them are printed on the rules card in the box; all twelve are here, in full.
“Do you have the Boar?”
Ask for animals instead of numbers. When you lay a pair down you say its flaw out loud, so the vocabulary comes with the game. Nothing to fish from is called the pond — a miss is “sing to the pond”. The youngest player at the table can play it without knowing a single letter.
War, decided by the alphabet instead of the rank.
Turn one card each. The animal whose letter is nearer to Z takes the pair, so the Zebra beats the Boar and the Boar beats nobody. Rank is ignored altogether, which is what makes it work: every card in the deck can be compared with every other. A true tie is rare — flip again. With four players it becomes a hunt for twins: two of the same animal down in one round takes the whole pile.
Snap — but you have to say the flaw as you slap.
Turn cards into the middle one at a time. When two share the same number, the first hand down must name that animal’s flaw: “Boar — aggression!” Slap without naming it and the card goes back. Say the virtue as well and you take one card more. Four cards to a rank, so the snaps come often. Two to four players.
One shared ladder, A to Z, and everyone builds it.
Deal every card out. Anyone lays a card to start the ladder, and after that each player adds one letter to the front of it or one letter to the back — a K beside a J, an L beside a K. Nothing that fits means you pass. First to empty a hand wins. Because the ladder is shared, a child holding no A is never stuck out of the game. Two to four players, about fifteen minutes.
They name the flaw. You name the answer to it.
Seven cards each, the rest is the pond. On your turn hold one card out facing the other players, so they can see it and you cannot. They call out the flaw they see; you must name the virtue that answers it to lay the card down. Aggression is answered by gentleness, boastfulness by humility. Wrong or stuck, you draw from the pond. First to empty a hand wins. This is the game the book is really for.
Three of a number is a herd — and twins count double.
Seven cards each; the rest is the pond with one card turned face up beside it. On your turn draw one, from the pond or the open card. A herd is three cards of the same number, and if two of the three are the same animal the herd is worth double. Lay your herds down, discard one card, and the first to lay down every card wins. Two to four players, about fifteen minutes.
Match by suit, by number, or by the letter next door.
Play one card onto the pile if it shares the suit or the number of the card showing, or if its letter is the neighbour of that card’s letter — an M onto an L or an N. Play a twin and you may immediately play a second card. No match, draw one. First to empty a hand wins.
Old Maid, with twenty-six pairs and one animal left alone.
Take one card out of the deck at the start without looking at it and set it aside face down — somewhere in the pack one animal now has no twin. Deal everything out, lay down every pair you hold, then take turns drawing blind from your neighbour’s hand. Whoever is left holding the lonely twin at the end loses, and everybody wants to know which animal it was.
Everyone against the deck: reunite ten pairs before the pond runs dry.
Five cards each, the rest is the pond. You may ask another player for a card, but never by its animal — only by its flaw or by its virtue: “has anyone got a card about sharing?” A wrong guess costs a card from the pond. Reunite ten twins before the pond is empty and the table wins together.
Two animals, one story, made up on the spot.
Turn two cards over and tell a story in which both animals meet — the greedy squirrel and the gloomy deer, the yelling yak and the scared sheep. Anything goes as long as both flaws are in it. Nobody reads anything, so it works with a whole room of children, and the storyteller changes with every pair.
The patience game: lay the whole alphabet out, alone.
Deal three side piles of four cards face up and hold the rest. Build the road from A upward, taking whatever fits from the piles or the top of your hand and refilling the piles as they empty. Stuck everywhere, gather what is left and re-deal — once only. Reach Z and the road is finished.
Charades, with three ways to give it away.
Take a card without showing it and pick your difficulty: act the animal for one point, act the flaw for two, act the virtue for three. No words and no animal noises for the harder two. The guesser keeps the card. Works from four years up, and works best standing on a rug.
Both of them use the same deck, and both work with a child who cannot read a word of it.
Hand over the card, not the compliment.
When a child does the thing a virtue names — waits, shares, tells the truth — give her that card to keep for the day. The virtue is printed under the flaw, so she is holding the word rather than hearing it. Say what she did and let the card do the rest.
Six animals, both cards of each, face down on the floor.
Pull the twelve cards out first — twelve cards taken at random from the deck contain almost no pairs, which is why this needs setting up. Turn two over at a time and keep the pairs you find. Scan the code on a card you have won and that fable’s song plays.
Real ranks, real suits, one shared back. Snap, patience, rummy, whist, president, cheat — the deck plays all of them with no house rules at all. The fables sit on the faces without getting in the way of an ordinary game of cards.